Although a few projects are going forward, the tech remains stuck in neutral.

Extreme weather events, like Superstorm Sandy that just drenched the northeastern coast of the United States, often refocus the public's attention on climate change. With Sandy, there were no straightforward connections, partly because it’s hard to connect climate change to a single weather event. Nevertheless, the storm may leave the US public more willing to tackle some of the challenges of climate change.

One of these big challenges is mitigating carbon emissions. Industrial development, power plants, and transportation integral to our modern society all release greenhouse gases that capture heat from the sun and warm the planet. The production and consumption of energy accounts for the majority of the greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, 91 percent of which is made of carbon dioxide (CO2) from burning fossil fuels.

In a world dependent on oil, coal, and natural gas, global emissions of CO2 will continue unless we improve energy efficiency and continue replacing some of those fossil fuels with some combination of nuclear power and renewable energy like solar and wind power. Another option for emission reductions involves preventing coal-fired power plants, cement plants, and steel mills from emitting carbon dioxide in the first place. Carbon capture systems grab carbon dioxide from the flue gas and concentrate the pure CO2. Pumping that gas underground could permanently store the carbon in places other than our planet’s atmosphere.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies could be part of our low-carbon energy future. Calculations from the International Energy Agency estimate that the cheapest suite of emissions reductions technologies operating by 2050 includes a 14 percent contribution from CCS. If that scenario played out as imagined, CCS would capture about 123 gigatonnes of CO2 by 2050. Currently, 16 operating or planned large-scale CCS projects will collectively capture about 0.03 percent of that CO2 yearly by 2015 (36 million metric tons). Most of that gas comes from natural sources or existing industrial processing streams. Only a few projects, like Boundary Dam in Canada and Kemper County in Mississippi, apply CCS to power plants.

Taken together, current CCS projects may not look like they’re on track to help reduce global carbon emissions as there are so few industrial-scale capture projects—particularly on power plants. But these projects are necessary baby steps for scaling up CCS technologies. Every capture plant and storage project is an opportunity to improve and develop the technology for the future while curbing CO2 emissions today, says Charles Freeman, a researcher at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Washington state.

Installation (dis)incentives

Why aren’t carbon capture technologies able to make a dent in our global CO2 emissions yet? Capturing carbon requires energy, so a power plant equipped with a carbon capture system must burn more coal. Walking capture technologies through incremental scale-ups to maximize energy efficiency takes money as well. Without regulations that either require carbon capture technologies or tax carbon emissions there’s little economic incentive for carbon-emitting industries to capture their carbon right now.

Enlarge/ Finished in 1997 and taken offline in 2000, the clean coal power plant in Healy, Alaska was cleared to come back online earlier this year.

As it stands, some funding for operating and planned CCS projects comes from federal governments in the US, Canada, Norway and the European Union. But that money is becoming hard to find in some parts of the world, particularly Europe. In June, developers in Scotland scrapped plans to build a 1852 MW coal-fired power plant outfitted with carbon capture over concerns about acquiring government funding. That plant would have been six times larger than the average power plant in the US in 2011.

But as government money is drying up, other sources are emerging. Increasingly, the oil industry is stepping in to fund CCS projects because captured CO2 can help them retrieve more oil from drained fields through a process called enhanced oil recovery (explained on page 2 of this article). They’re also supporting projects that hope to offset CCS installation and operating costs by turning captured CO2 into a sellable product, like baking soda. The X-Prize Foundation, known for funding spacecraft competitions, is also developing a challenge to turn carbon dioxide into useful materials.

With the right economic drivers, be it policy or CO2 utilization, some capture technologies are very close to being developed and available at the scales necessary, Freeman says. And those technologies could help mitigate climate change. Recent models predict that outfitting US coal-fired power plants with current CCS technology, despite the energy penalties, could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about 50 percent by 2100 (Environ. Sci. Technol., DOI: 10.1021/es3006332).

Amine scrubbing

A large carbon capture facility opened in Mongstad, Norway last May. It’s a test bed for capture technologies attached to either a gas power plant or an oil refinery. But the testing phase is just that—a test. All captured CO2—initially up to 100,000 metric tons a year—will be released to the atmosphere. Transporting and storing that small amount of captured carbon dioxide would be too expensive, according to Vegar Stokeset, spokesman for the facility in Mongstad. However, storage will be necessary once a capture plant is built to process the entire emissions from the power plant.

Enlarge/ Workers navigate the maze of pipes at the Technology Centre Mongstad facility.

The carbon capture technology deployed at this test site is time- and industry-tested. Trapping carbon dioxide in a solution of amines (nitrogen-containing molecules where the nitrogen atom sports a free pair of electrons) was first patented in 1930, and natural gas refineries still use this trick today to remove CO2 mixed with the crude methane (Science, 2009, DOI: 10.1126/science.1176731). Workers bubble the CO2-containing natural gas through an amine solution, commonly monoethanolamine. Carbon dioxide binds to the nitrogen atom of the amines, while the rest of the gas passes through. Boiling the amine solution releases the carbon dioxide gas, which can be compressed and transported through pipelines.

Heating and cooling the amine solution for each round of carbon capture requires energy. Add in more electricity to power pumps that compress the captured CO2, and carbon capture equipment sucks about 20 to 30 percent of a power plant’s capacity, says Gary Rochelle, a chemical engineer at the University of Texas, in Austin. This parasitic energy load, combined with the upfront costs of building a capture plant near a power plant, tip the balance sheet away from installing such facilities without a regulatory mandate. But once operating, amine scrubbers could capture 75 to 90 percent of the CO2 in flue gas.

Moving amine scrubbing from pilot projects to full-sized power plants requires testing the process on increasingly larger scales. Without large-scale commercial installations of the amine scrubbing technology, it’s hard to improve the energy efficiency of the process. And without big capture plants operating, some argue that the government can’t mandate the technology yet. "It’s a chicken and egg problem—though mostly chicken problem, taken quite literally," Rochelle says. "[The legislature] is too chicken to make the tough decisions that need to be made on this issue."

In the US, regulations might be in the works, but not without political complications. The Environmental Protection Agency recently proposed the first regulations limiting carbon emissions from future coal-burning power plants. In its last vote of the session in September, the House of Representatives passed a bill to prevent those restrictions, though the bill will die in the Senate. But a question remains unanswered: if carbon emissions limits are eventually enacted, how can power plants comply without passing the cost on to their customers via higher electricity bills?

97 Reader Comments

Why all the technological solutions? Looking toward nature, trees are the best carbon sink to date, when you take into account the total cost of ownership and end results. Gigantic tree plantations can not only drawn down large amounts of carbon dioxide for very low cost, they also provide an extremely useful and versatile material; help prevent soil erosion; provide habitats for a limited range of birds and other animals; and require a reasonable amount of low-skilled labour, which equals jobs for any able-bodied person who cares to work.

They are relatively unprofitable, technologically "unsexy" and they take *time* to bear results. But in the long term, we are (IMHO) far better off using the existing natural solution than wasting energy, time and money on inferior technological solutions.

Why all the technological solutions? Looking toward nature, trees are the best carbon sink to date, when you take into account the total cost of ownership and end results. Gigantic tree plantations can not only drawn down large amounts of carbon dioxide for very low cost, they also provide an extremely useful and versatile material; help prevent soil erosion; provide habitats for a limited range of birds and other animals; and require a reasonable amount of low-skilled labour, which equals jobs for any able-bodied person who cares to work.

They are relatively unprofitable, technologically "unsexy" and they take *time* to bear results. But in the long term, we are (IMHO) far better off using the existing natural solution than wasting energy, time and money on inferior technological solutions.

We already have forests covering most of the areas that can support trees and aren't being cultivated by humans, though. That's not to say that they're not helping, but it doesn't seem like we can do much (aside from not cutting down any more forests) without taking away farmland, which is bound to be very unpopular. It's not so much a matter of technology vs. nature as what's a viable policy.

Also, to actually reduce atmospheric carbon permanently, we have to make sure the forest never burns...

The problem is trees require a lot of land. And, the land that is good for trees to grow is great for crops to grow. Most countries would rather feed their people and economy than set aside land for trees. Thus they look for other ways to take care of the problem without changing the way they use the land.

We also have many deserts that theoretically could support a lot of trees if large scale geo-engineering were feasible – in fact, many deserts used to be forests or arable land, before we made them into deserts.It would probably be a very difficult and costly task, but not necessarily more so than applying carbon capture on a sufficiently large scale. And after, the systems would be self-sustaining, not requiring continuous injection of additional resources (energy, money, raw materials), plus a lot more nice landscapes and a lot less grim deserts.

We also have many deserts that theoretically could support a lot of trees if large scale geo-engineering were feasible – in fact, many deserts used to be forests or arable land, before we made them into deserts.It would probably be a very difficult and costly task, but not necessarily more so than applying carbon capture on a sufficiently large scale. And after, the systems would be self-sustaining, not requiring continuous injection of additional resources (energy, money, raw materials), plus a lot more nice landscapes and a lot less grim deserts.

And we will have gained valuable experience terraforming that can be put to use when we arrive on Mars!

In all seriousness, I have no idea how feasible that really is, but it sounds like it would produce some very interesting science/engineering.

Carbon capture may be part of our green future, but isn't storing captured carbon inland dangerous? Considering that CO2 has higher density than air, if those high-pressure CO2 stored underground burst out, it would just roll downhill, suffocating every living thing in its path.

Any more info on whether this scenario is considered scientifically is welcome.

A colleague of mine worked for a while in CCS research. In the end, his conclusion was that the "capture" part is well and truly feasible, and is worthwhile working on.

However, the "storage" part really needs a rethink. The focus here in Australia is on geosequestration, and it really is a risky and possibly ineffective process. There are very common instances of leakage, and some pretty nasty geochemical effects when that happens. Monitoring is tricky, and you definitely don't want the gases getting into fresh water aquifers.

However, industry is pushing ahead. The cynic in me worries that they will proceed with geosequestration and just deny any leakage is happening.

We also have many deserts that theoretically could support a lot of trees if large scale geo-engineering were feasible – in fact, many deserts used to be forests or arable land, before we made them into deserts.It would probably be a very difficult and costly task, but not necessarily more so than applying carbon capture on a sufficiently large scale. And after, the systems would be self-sustaining, not requiring continuous injection of additional resources (energy, money, raw materials), plus a lot more nice landscapes and a lot less grim deserts.

And we will have gained valuable experience terraforming that can be put to use when we arrive on Mars!

In all seriousness, I have no idea how feasible that really is, but it sounds like it would produce some very interesting science/engineering.

It's more involved than merely irrigating land (if that was all it took, there would be no deserts left). To my surprise, though, there is actually at least one plan to literally grow a forest in a desert: the Sahara Forest Project. Depending on how that turns out, growing new forests on unused-but-treeless land might be feasible in the future.

Anyway, as for the long term sequestration of carbon in forests, it apparently varies from place to place. A lot of carbon is taken from the air as a forest expands, but less once it's reached its full area. If the forest burns, a lot of the carbon goes right back into the air. The only really long term gain is in the matter that eventually becomes soil.

EDIT: To be clear, growing new forests is already technically feasible. I'm more concerned here with its viability compared to the carbon capture tech discussed in the article, which is already quite feasible and could potentially be made profitable.

What a waste of good carbon and oxygen this CO2 sequestration or subproduct marketing is.If trees and plants are consuming too much space and water, can't some GM chloroplast cells be engineered to produce oxygen and vegetal material that can be sold as compost or fertilizer? Or can't we split both elements somehow in order to obtain oxygen and pure carbon for carbon fiber or nanotubes?

What a waste of good carbon and oxygen this CO2 sequestration or subproduct marketing is.If trees and plants are consuming too much space and water, can't some GM chloroplast cells be engineered to produce oxygen and vegetal material that can be sold as compost or fertilizer?

So we'll capture the CO2, convert it to baking soda (expending additional energy and releasing more C02 to then capture and convert in the process) only to end up releasing it again when it's used to bake a loaf of bread?

"The plant will offset nearly 200,000 metric tons of CO2 otherwise used to mine and produce the same chemicals, in addition to the 75,000 metric tons of CO2 captured. By capturing carbon at a profit, Jones hopes to fund research and development so the technology becomes affordable for power plants."

Carbon capture may be part of our green future, but isn't storing captured carbon inland dangerous? Considering that CO2 has higher density than air, if those high-pressure CO2 stored underground burst out, it would just roll downhill, suffocating every living thing in its path.

Any more info on whether this scenario is considered scientifically is welcome.

So we'll capture the CO2, convert it to baking soda (expending additional energy and releasing more C02 to then capture and convert in the process) only to end up releasing it again when it's used to bake a loaf of bread?

This seems less like carbon capture and more like catch and release.

Depends on what it's used for. At worst, though, it's still taking the place of carbon from from some other source that would have been released.

Anyway, I think most of the captured carbon would go into cement and not baking soda if this kind of technology became widespread (as in the 123 gigaton figure from the article). There isn't really a demand for that much baking soda.

We also have many deserts that theoretically could support a lot of trees if large scale geo-engineering were feasible – in fact, many deserts used to be forests or arable land, before we made them into deserts.It would probably be a very difficult and costly task, but not necessarily more so than applying carbon capture on a sufficiently large scale. And after, the systems would be self-sustaining, not requiring continuous injection of additional resources (energy, money, raw materials), plus a lot more nice landscapes and a lot less grim deserts.

Theoretically a great idea. But the problem is water. Starting a sustainable forest in the desert requires enormous irrigation infrastructure. I read a recent article about vertically scalable agriculture. A skycraper growing food on every level. Captured carbon could be used for that. And we can then decrease a lot of the land required for agriculture.

Why all the technological solutions? Looking toward nature, trees are the best carbon sink to date, when you take into account the total cost of ownership and end results. Gigantic tree plantations can not only drawn down large amounts of carbon dioxide for very low cost, they also provide an extremely useful and versatile material; help prevent soil erosion; provide habitats for a limited range of birds and other animals; and require a reasonable amount of low-skilled labour, which equals jobs for any able-bodied person who cares to work.

They are relatively unprofitable, technologically "unsexy" and they take *time* to bear results. But in the long term, we are (IMHO) far better off using the existing natural solution than wasting energy, time and money on inferior technological solutions.

Right. The biggest challenge is water. Trees can convert CO2 into wood only where there's sun and water. Sun is easy, there are gigantic unexploited areas out there where there's plenty of sun, but water is much, much more difficult. If someone could develop a reasonably sized and rapid growing tree that can live in salt water, that would be a big development.

Right. The biggest challenge is water. Trees can convert CO2 into wood only where there's sun and water. Sun is easy, there are gigantic unexploited areas out there where there's plenty of sun, but water is much, much more difficult. If someone could develop a reasonably sized and rapid growing tree that can live in salt water, that would be a big development.

The problem is trees require a lot of land. And, the land that is good for trees to grow is great for crops to grow. Most countries would rather feed their people and economy than set aside land for trees. Thus they look for other ways to take care of the problem without changing the way they use the land.

That is Not completely true. In Europe, many farmers are played to stop farming, because actually there is too much food, and that is bad for the market. There is more than enough food in the world for everybody, already. The problem is that too many people don't have the money to get it.

The principle is that you pump CO2 down to methane hydrate layers where it takes the place of the methane in a crystalline structure, releasing methane which can be burned for energy. With the immense amount of methane down there it has the potential to cover the energy supply for the foreseeable future in a largely carbon neutral way.

IMHO the best part of the solution would include re-forestation using trees native to a particular land, and vertical farming. Plenty of people have good ideas on both parts, the problem is that building an agricultural skyscraper is expensive, and AFAIK untested at full scale. Re-foresting is a tried-and-true method, so long as the land is available. Also, research has shown that greening up rooftops and building facades has proven to be mildly beneficial on the small scale and can lower energy consumption in individual buildings that use these methods. Any benefit is good, particularly when you add up the effects of all of them. Man-made CO2 storage seems like it will be prone to spectacular failure, I don't care WHAT the engineers say. Anyone remember the great man-made disasters of the past? Trees can burn, and should to some degree in order keep the forest healthy. Trying to prevent wildfires has only made them worse.

We also have many deserts that theoretically could support a lot of trees if large scale geo-engineering were feasible... And after, the systems would be self-sustaining, not requiring continuous injection of additional resources (energy, money, raw materials), plus a lot more nice landscapes and a lot less grim deserts.

I have been reading the recent "world bank report" (4 degrees) and the book "Storms of my grandchildren" by Hansen. Both of these underscore the growing consensus that climate Change is even worse than reported by the IPCC so far. IPCC reports are by nature conservative and there are indications that many of the feed-backs operate in a non-liner or exponential manner instead of a linear manner. And there is a growing worry that release of methane gas from the tundras and eventually the methane-hydrates could lead to a run-away warming. This run-away warming would be precipitated by the melting of the polar ice (Greenland to begin with). A 6-degree warming remains a possibility. Six degrees would likely spell the end of human civilization.

Because the future looks so bad talking about carbon-capture may be immoral, since all coal-fired powerplants should be banned and dismantled. But we may need CSS for a different and very costly reason: If it becomes clear in 10-15 years time that humanity really faces an existential threat from global warming then all the carbon that is being emitted today needs to be put back into the ground. This would be enormously expensive but we would need CSS for that.

IMHO the best part of the solution would include re-forestation using trees native to a particular land, and vertical farming. Plenty of people have good ideas on both parts, the problem is that building an agricultural skyscraper is expensive, and AFAIK untested at full scale. Re-foresting is a tried-and-true method, so long as the land is available. Also, research has shown that greening up rooftops and building facades has proven to be mildly beneficial on the small scale and can lower energy consumption in individual buildings that use these methods. Any benefit is good, particularly when you add up the effects of all of them. Man-made CO2 storage seems like it will be prone to spectacular failure, I don't care WHAT the engineers say. Anyone remember the great man-made disasters of the past? Trees can burn, and should to some degree in order keep the forest healthy. Trying to prevent wildfires has only made them worse.

EDIT: grammatical error fixed.

There is no one single part for a right solution. CCS is just one small part of the hundred other things we just do, including what you mentioned.

They are relatively unprofitable, technologically "unsexy" and they take *time* to bear results. But in the long term, we are (IMHO) far better off using the existing natural solution than wasting energy, time and money on inferior technological solutions.

There is so much carbon in the atmosphere that even if we covered every square inc of the land with trees it would still not be enough. And we need increasing amounts of land for cultivation (there is already too little and Global Warming is reducing it further). If we just manage to keep the present amount of forests intact that would be a huge win but it doe not look good.

After this article I really think, CCS has some bigger role to play. How big remains to be seen, once the global CO2 market finally kicks off. Then "the market will decide" if CCS, re-forestation, vertical agriculture or simply renewables will do it.

This is a terrific article. As mentioned in the article, coal is an entirely different animal than natural gas because of all of the contaminants it contains, particularly sulfur. Some grades of coal are better than others, but it is all a problem. Coal also makes up more of the energy budget than natural gas in most industrialized countries, so solving the coal problem will have a greater impact, even though it is far more difficult. In fact, the Government accountability office released a report today stating that coal is here to stay (for better or worse) in the medium term

I am working on a variety of technologies that aid CCS from coal and use of the CO2 after capture, but they are a long way off. Using oxyfuel methods with flue gas scrubbing or the integrated gasification and combined cycle with CCS are both viable, but they both require more capital investment than adding amine scrubbing to existing plants.

Because the future looks so bad talking about carbon-capture may be immoral, since all coal-fired powerplants should be banned and dismantled. But we may need CSS for a different and very costly reason: If it becomes clear in 10-15 years time that humanity really faces an existential threat from global warming then all the carbon that is being emitted today needs to be put back into the ground. This would be enormously expensive but we would need CSS for that.

Yeah, agree. [sry for double posting]

Yet that is a bit of a different kind of technology then the one discussed here. You'd have to "filter" huge amounts of air in order to get those 0.04% something CO2 out of it.

Better than natural forests seem to be wood production. link(german)Speaking for Germany, its CO2 reduction goals (300.000tons a year) could be met by planting fast growing trees on 1,7% of currently unused land, then chopping them down and storing the wood without contact to oxigen e.g. in old mines. You get some kind of artificial coal (a million years later...)

One potential use of CO2 is to turn hydrogen created using water electrolysis into more easily storable and transportable synthetic hydrocarbon fuel using the Fischer Tropsch process. Clearly if the C02 comes from cheapest current sources, then once the synthetic fuel is burnt, the C02 goes into the atmosphere as before - but you would then get 2 energy cycles from it instead of 1. To make synthetic airline fuel in a fully sustainable way, you'd have to capture the C02 input into Fischer Tropsch from a biofuel generating plant.

If what you want to achieve is long term carbon capture, burying waste paper in securely designed land fill instead of recycling it is likely to be more efficient than growing and burying trees without conventional use of forestry products.

EDIT: To be clear, growing new forests is already technically feasible. I'm more concerned here with its viability compared to the carbon capture tech discussed in the article, which is already quite feasible and could potentially be made profitable.

Yes, but beside profit, the problem is if it is feasible at a scale sufficient to make a dent in the problem. Are there even enough raw materials the necessary chemicals for Carbon Capture at the right scale?Despite knowing nearly nothing, I was already pretty sure that creating forests from deserts would require more than simply irrigating, but then again, creating a self-sustaining long-term ecosystem still strikes me as more feasible, however difficult, than an equally gigantic, but also endlessly needing to be remade, technological solution.

I have been reading the recent "world bank report" (4 degrees) and the book "Storms of my grandchildren" by Hansen. Both of these underscore the growing consensus that climate Change is even worse than reported by the IPCC so far. IPCC reports are by nature conservative and there are indications that many of the feed-backs operate in a non-liner or exponential manner instead of a linear manner. And there is a growing worry that release of methane gas from the tundras and eventually the methane-hydrates could lead to a run-away warming. This run-away warming would be precipitated by the melting of the polar ice (Greenland to begin with). A 6-degree warming remains a possibility. Six degrees would likely spell the end of human civilization.

Because the future looks so bad talking about carbon-capture may be immoral, since all coal-fired powerplants should be banned and dismantled. But we may need CSS for a different and very costly reason: If it becomes clear in 10-15 years time that humanity really faces an existential threat from global warming then all the carbon that is being emitted today needs to be put back into the ground. This would be enormously expensive but we would need CSS for that.

And replaced with what? Those same groups that oppose coal also oppose nuclear. Which is the only alternative that would be able to replace coal cost effectively.

If you get the CO2 out of the plant, it can be sold as carbon stock to RFTS plants and remanufacturered back into fuels. This process is essentuially a catalyst process transforming hater into H2 and O2 through hydrolysis (which is only required a few hours a day to make enough H2 to power the system, so it can be powered by off-peak wind overproduction, a critical issue that industry currently has that makes wind difficult to make affordable, solving a paralell problem and making wind more viable). The )2 is sold for profit to the medical industry. The H2 and CO2 is processed further via catalysts and can be made into chemically pure fuels for about $4 a gallon total cost. 40% of the water in the system is recycled, and the other water input need not be pottable water, so it;s of limited impact on driking water (in fact they can skip the re-use process and give off 40% potable pure water as another avenue of revenue).

This is proven technology since the 1940s as well. The navy uses it today. Although, on a ship, or on small scale, its far less efficient, and modern technology and better design have added further improvement in the last 20 years, but this is a completely viable technology that solves many major problems:- what to do with waste CO2: make more fuel, that fuel now being 100% carbon nuetral and a replacement for drilling oil- Oil independence, the USA would need about 2,000 RFTS plants to make enough gas, greases, and diesel to run our fleet, and that would create about a million jobs too. We have the resources to make 4-5000 plants and become a massive fuel exporter.- fuel is chemically pure. No sulfurs, no heavy metals, which means burning it improves vehicle life and lowers other pollutants to near zero other than CO2. - Solves a critical wind power industry cost issue, what to do with generated power no one can use, today they PAY to make that power go away instead of selling it for use, a fuel industry using that power solves that equasion- no more big oil. We'll need thousands of plants, anyone can invest and build one, no fw companies will be able to dominate the fuel refining landscape. increased competition will keep prices more stable and devalue the political influence of major fuel companies. - less fuel transport. There will be a refinery near most large towns, so no more pipelines and no more trucking fuel long distances to bring fuel to consumers. Instead, we can reverse the pipelines and pump overproduction to sea ports to send fuel overseas and increae exports. - because CO2 will be used close to factories in which it's made, the compression, storage, and trucking costs of CCS systems goes away. They could pipeline CO2 UNCOMPRESSED to a neighboring facility for immediate use in making fuel, taking the power requirements to compress the waste out of the equasion entirely. - The plants have extremely low EPA potential issue. The same regulations thta apply to a gas station are all that is needed for this type of refinery as there's no hazanrdous waste that's otherwise associated with oil refining. No dangerous chemicals are onsite other than the fuel itself that's made, and the EPA rules already covering neighboring power plants they'll get that CO2 from exceed the regulations such a faciltiy would need.

Why are we not already doing this? Big Oil Lobying and burying of critical information in the press. If RFTS takes off, big oil dies, wind power trumps solar, and coal begins a slow decline. Also, this type of system has a 40-75 year lifespan, with a plant lasting 30-50 years before needing replacement/overhaul. by that time, we'll be running much more universally on battery powered cars and the demand for this entire fuel industry will fail, so it;s only a mid-term investment, which to be a long term viable company needs to also parallel invest in wind and other energy systems, it;s complicated to get into even if Oil wasn;t working hard to ensure not a penny of federal funding helps get a proff of concept plant running. Remember, this isn't vaporware like algae fules, this is 70 years of proven chemistry, we know it works, we just need to build it, and yet the money is stopped at every turn...

Meanwhile, other large CCS projects under construction, like Gorgon on Barrow Island in Australia, are testing geologic storage and monitoring so there will be a safe place to store the CO2 once it’s captured.

Haha, that's clever. It's as if they're turning all the Carbon into stone or something; petrifying it.

And replaced with what? Those same groups that oppose coal also oppose nuclear. Which is the only alternative that would be able to replace coal cost effectively.

Solar and wind installation have their own NIMBY problems.

The sad reality is that at a certain point we will need to live with much less energy than we use today (even if we could swap all that is carbon-based for renewables and nuclear, the costs would still intrinsically be higher than the free lunch we enjoyed by burning fossil fuels naturally created over millions of years of chemical transformations). This is happening, though it may be difficult to ascertain whether sooner or later, simply because the fuel that we use today is a finite amount; the only question is whether we will gently slow down or crash suddenly (or, perhaps more likely, something in-between)

Why are we not already doing this? Big Oil Lobying and burying of critical information in the press. If RFTS takes off, big oil dies, wind power trumps solar, and coal begins a slow decline. Also, this type of system has a 40-75 year lifespan, with a plant lasting 30-50 years before needing replacement/overhaul. by that time, we'll be running much more universally on battery powered cars and the demand for this entire fuel industry will fail, so it;s only a mid-term investment, which to be a long term viable company needs to also parallel invest in wind and other energy systems, it;s complicated to get into even if Oil wasn;t working hard to ensure not a penny of federal funding helps get a proff of concept plant running. Remember, this isn't vaporware like algae fules, this is 70 years of proven chemistry, we know it works, we just need to build it, and yet the money is stopped at every turn...

I work on this process, and it is not nearly this easy, or as cost effective as described here. One of many problems is that the Fischer-Tropsch catalysts are very easily poisoned and require extremely pure gas streams. As discussed above, this is particularly a problem for flue gas from coal, but even fairly pure methane combustion can be a problem. The process is also dangerous, difficult to control, and frequently yields a large amount of unintended by products. It is very hard to get the precise gas ratios into the reactor. Its also unbelievably energy intensive and an electrolysis based version could not survive on off-peak wind alone. (An F-T plant combined with an IGCC plant to use the syngas during off peak periods makes much more sense, but even this isn't economically viable).

This is a very cool process that will undoubtedly play a major role as we shift away from oil feedstocks for petrochemicals. However, there are a huge number of difficult technical limitations that are preventing its widespread use. Its slow growth has nothing to do with big oil lobbying whatsoever and everything to do with outstanding technical and economic challenges.

Why all the technological solutions? Looking toward nature, trees are the best carbon sink to date, when you take into account the total cost of ownership and end results. Gigantic tree plantations can not only drawn down large amounts of carbon dioxide for very low cost, they also provide an extremely useful and versatile material; help prevent soil erosion; provide habitats for a limited range of birds and other animals; and require a reasonable amount of low-skilled labour, which equals jobs for any able-bodied person who cares to work.

They are relatively unprofitable, technologically "unsexy" and they take *time* to bear results. But in the long term, we are (IMHO) far better off using the existing natural solution than wasting energy, time and money on inferior technological solutions.

Extreme weather events, like Superstorm Sandy that just drenched the northeastern coast of the United States, often refocus the public's attention on climate change. With Sandy, there were no straightforward connections, partly because it’s hard to connect climate change to a single weather event.

Why even bother including this line about Sandy in this article when that storm in fact had nothing at all to do with climate change? What made Sandy so bad was the timing. The whole global warming and Sandy connect has been thoroughly debunked.